Criolo broke ground on the São Paulo rap/hip hop scene with his second album, Nó na Orelha (Knot in the ear), which was released for free download on the internet in early 2011. Nó na Orelha was chosen as Album of the Year at Brazil’s MTV Music Awards and “Não Existe Amor em SP” won Song of the Year. This song, like many of Criolo’s, portrays the gritty nature of life in São Paulo, where the poor neighborhoods are riddled with drugs and violence and the city is overwhelmed by vanity and greed.

Criolo earned widespread praise for Nó na Orelha in particular because of the unusual diversity of sounds, musical styles and socially conscious themes in the lyrics. As Russ Slater put it, Criolo and his collaborators on this album have found “a way in which hip-hop can still be from the streets but can also include elements of Afro-Brazilian rhythms, dub, samba, Amazonian percussion, avant-garde jazz, and whatever other element seem fit to join the mix.”

Criolo was born Kleber Cavalcante Gomes in 1975 in São Paulo’s south zone, son of a metal worker and a teacher. He spent time working as a shoe salesman, a street vendor, and selling clothes from door to door. He began to study Pedagogy but left the university and entered the public school system as a teacher at the age of 18. But he had already begun rapping a few years earlier, using the name Criolo Doido (the Crazy Creole – Criolo dropped the “Crazy” in 2011, explaining that he would have to do a lot more to be truly “doido” – in the good sense of the word). He released his first album, Ainda Há Tempo, in 2006, and founded Rinha dos MCs (MCs Cockpit), where MCs in São Paulo face off with each other (eg.